What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

  Hot Spots

  Antwerp: The world’s fourth-biggest port and a center for fashion design. Also a major transshipment point for drugs, arms, and stolen goods of all sorts.

  Brussels: Now called the Capital of Europe, since the EU took up residence here, she’s home to wonderful restaurants and one of Europe’s prettiest squares—flashy La Grand-Place. Noted for art nouveau design, antiques markets, and a few stunning neighborhoods (some dotted with lakes), Brussels lost many historical buildings in the 1990s, when developers erected modern structures for the EU. Over 12 percent of offices in Brussels are devoted to EU institutions.11

  La Grand-Place was destroyed in 1695, when French armies tried to knock down City Hall. That edifice remained, but neighboring buildings crumbled. They were rebuilt as headquarters for mercantile guilds, all trying to outdo each other in gold-heavy baroque style. In the 1800s, Karl Marx lived here, penning his Communist Manifesto while staying in a room above what is now the Swan Restaurant, a bourgeoisie favorite.

  Bruges: Once a wealthy textile town, this canal-happy city crams in more tourists per square inch than Paris.

  Ghent: This lost-in-time town with rich medieval architecture, including a majestic castle, graceful church spires, and authentic store fronts, takes the noose as its symbol. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V tried to humiliate rebellious fifteenth-century residents by marching them through the city wearing only nooses and shirts; now they reenact the scene annually.

  Hotshots:

  Guy Verhofstadt: Prime Minister, 1999–present. Right-leaning in theory, his administration legalized euthanasia and gay marriage, and closed down Belgium’s seven nuclear plants. Keeps tossing more autonomy to Belgium’s disparate regions.

  La Grand-Place: Great for mussels in Brussels

  King Albert II: Reigning monarch, 1993–present. This monarch has had a tough life: his mother, Princess Astrid of Sweden, died in a car crash when he was one—his father was driving—and six years later, the royal family was locked up in Germany while Nazis occupied Belgium. He’s a tad wild: loves motorcycles and riding them fast; married Italian noblewoman Paola Ruffo di Calabria in 1959, but admits to having a daughter by a Belgian baroness.

  Georges Simenon (1903–1989): Celebrated pen behind the fictional detective Inspector Maigret, Simenon cranked out more than 500 books (plus innumerable short stories) by the time he died at eighty-six. He claimed to have sex at least three times a day, perhaps not always with his wife: he was known as “the man of 10,000 women.”12

  Tintin (1929–1983): In 1929, Georges Remi (aka Hergé) gave birth to the modern comic book when he inked boy reporter Tintin, fluffy canine Snowy (aka Milou), and scotch-swilling sailor Captain Haddock, who in their first adventure battled Communists in the Soviet Union. Over the course of twenty-two volumes, the trio (along with the Thompson Twins and Professor Calculus) uncovered treasures and took on evil forces everywhere from Peru to the moon. The crew died when Hergé did, in 1983 at age seventy-five.

  René Magritte (1898–1967): He brought the absurd to the everyday (and vice versa) in precise images that always contained a slip of logic and a joke. A man looks into a mirror and sees the back of his head, or perhaps the sky is raining blank-expressioned businessmen. The Belgian art world didn’t get his reality-questioning works. In 1927, critics so slayed his first Belgian show of surrealistic paintings that he moved to France, where his works still weren’t fully appreciated for another two decades. By the time he died in 1967, however, the innovator was acclaimed the foundation stone of pop art.

  PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577–1640)

  Born in Antwerp, Peter Paul Rubens, the seventeenth century’s most famous artist, certainly got around—studying in Venice, Genoa, and Rome, then heading to Spain and London—and made a huge name for himself wherever he set up his easel. Best recalled for his 2,000 oil paintings—some of corpulent women, some with religious themes, and some now fetching upward of $60 million—the court painter was also a skilled diplomat: in 1630, he negotiated peace between England and Spain, who’d been going at it for five decades. After marrying a sixteen-year-old when he was fifty-three, Rubens created many of his finest works and sired five more children while living in luxury. His rich style of living came with a price—gout took him out.

  6. IRELAND

  (Éire)

  Getting Her Due

  FAST FACTS

  Country: Republic of Ireland; Éire

  Capital: Dublin

  Government: Parliamentary democracy

  Independence: 1921 “Irish Free State,” limited independence from United Kingdom; 1948 republic formed, called Éire

  Population: 4,063,000 (2006 estimate)

  Head of State: President Mary McAleese (1997)

  Head of Government: Prime Minister Bertie Ahern (1997)

  Elections: President elected by popular vote, seven-year term; prime minister nominated by house of representatives, appointed by president

  Name of Parliament: Oireachtas

  Ethnicity: Celtic, English

  Religion: 89% Roman Catholic; 3% Church of Ireland; 2% other Christian; 3% other; 3% none (2002)

  Language: English (official), Irish (Gaelic) (official)

  Literacy: 99% (2003)

  Famous Exports: Ryanair, Guiness, the IRA

  Economic Big Boy: CRH (construction); 2004 total sales: $13.55 billion1

  Per Capita GDP: $34,100 (2005 estimate)

  Unemployment: 4.3% (January 2006 Eurostat figure)

  EU Status: Entered EEC in 1973

  Currency: Euro

  Quick Tour

  Make way for the new Éire. After centuries of wallowing in depressing financial and historical muck, Ireland has picked herself up, shined herself off, and she is now displaying herself as the sparkling gem that she is. Ireland’s economy is racing, her world status is rising, and for the first time in 170 years, more people are running to the island of soft folded hills than are running away.

  A previously unfathomable quarter of a million immigrants moved to Ireland between 1995 and 2000, many of them Irish who’d long before moved away. And the numbers keep rising.

  Everything looks greener than ever in Éire: new businesses are shooting up, new housing is going in, and the country is overflowing with good spirit and a mood of prosperity. With their newfound wealth, the Irish are downright giddy. A chat in the pub will reveal that plenty of those not long out of college have bought their own car and house—in cash—and are now perhaps buying a new home for their parents. There are so many jobs to be had that, until recently, recruiters were signing up employees straight off the plane. And the GDP keeps booming: average income was $30,000 in 2003, and two years later it was $5,000 more. The Irish now make more money than anybody else in the EU except Luxembourgers, and Ireland has the lowest unemployment rate in all of Europe.

  The Irish are cutting impressive figures in the global arena. Former president Mary Robinson headed the UN Commission on Human Rights and is one of the world’s most respected politicians. Long noted for amazing writers— James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, and Lady Gregory among them—Ireland is now reaching millions more with the music of U2, Sinéad O’Connor, the Cranberries, and Bob Geldof, who weave politics, folklore, society, and history into song.

  The good news is that the “Emerald Tiger” has finally slipped out from Britain’s long, oppressive shadow and is jigging with business partners all over the world. And the best news is that the heated situation in Northern Ireland has cooled off—well, sort of, pretty much, at least for the moment, maybe. And the latest news is that the Economist says that Ireland is the best place in the whole world to live (although the London-based magazine hasn’t moved there yet).2

  Never has Éire been trendier, as evidenced by earnings from tourism. In 2004, tourism kicked about $6 billion into the Irish coffers, making it one of the country’s biggest moneymakers. In 1992, income from tourism amounted to about $2 billion. Now over 7 million visitors tou
ch down on the Enchanted Isle every year.

  Fetching Ireland: Beauty starts at the coast and rolls in

  THE SURREAL DIMENSION

  The wind howling through the glen sounds like muffled voices, mushrooms sprout from the rain-sodden ground almost magically, fog tangles eerily among gnarly witchy-fingered branches, and the quaint stone cottages puffing smoke during the day seem scarily isolated at night. There’s something about Ireland that seems supernaturally charged. Whether it’s the remnant of folktales implanted in young minds or a way of explaining the unknown, many Irish, particularly those in rural areas, believe in magic—leprechauns, wood sprites, and screaming banshees; across the countryside, lone undisturbed mounds rise up midfield and are thought to be fairy rings; salt is thrown into borrowed milk; dried herbs hang over doors to keep phantoms from entering. You don’t have to go far to find seemingly rational people who swear they have encountered the wee folk. (See www.irelandseye.com/leprechaun for a webcam look at a fairy circle.)

  Ireland is the EU’s poster child for success. No other EU country has ever used funding from Brussels to stimulate her economy to greater effect. Wisely spent EU money, good marketing, and a surge of foreign investment—in the 1990s, IBM, Intel, and other computer firms suddenly wanted a piece of the Dublin action—helped the Irish economy explode. Financially, Ireland is considered the most global economy—she even weathered the 2001 “dot.com crash.”

  The bad news is that the EU funding that helped make Ireland sparkle is getting cut, but the good news is that it doesn’t really matter. The other bad news is that it’s hard to imagine that Ireland will ever be fully content until her North and South are again united as one. And that just may never happen, which may be good news or bad news, depending on which side you’re on, and pretty much everybody takes a side around here. Or at least they used to. Lately the calls for a united Ireland—a cause that hundreds of thousands died for historically—are dying down. The Irish, now content with their country, are more likely to shrug off the North as a problem that, if absorbed, would cast a shadow on their very bright light. Even in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams—once an ardent supporter of secession from the UK—is saying union with Ireland is no longer a pressing goal. And as for the Brits, over half of them are saying it’s time to cut Northern Ireland free. Northern Ireland, once the object of desire of Brits and Irish, now appears to be the headache nobody wants.

  IRELAND VS. REPUBLIC OF IRELAND VS. NORTHERN IRELAND

  Ireland is a gorgeous chlorophyll-happy island lounging between the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea. The island is divided into two countries: the bulk of it, twenty-six counties, is the Republic of Ireland (Éire), which became independent from Britain in 1921. Six counties to the northeast—Northern Ireland—belong to an entirely different country, namely the United Kingdom, aka Britain. Most residents of the Republic of Ireland are Catholic, but the dominant group in Northern Ireland for centuries was Protestant. Catholics live in Northern Ireland, as well; their call for equal rights in the 1960s led to civil unrest there, although relations have been testy for centuries. The problem wasn’t as much religion as it was allegiance—Protestants usually wanted to keep ties with Britain, and Catholics usually wanted to politically bond with the Republic of Ireland. However, the Northern Ireland situation has improved since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which gives more power to Catholics and Protestants and more autonomy to Northern Ireland as a whole. Now Northern Ireland has the option to leave Britain and become part of Ireland—if the majority votes to do so.

  Beyond economics, all of Irish society is transforming. The school system is now secular, being run since the 1970s by the government, not the Church; and the agriculture that once employed most Irish workers has been shoved aside by industry—Ireland is now the second largest producer of computer software, behind the United States. In the land where not long ago, you could not buy condoms—the train to Northern Ireland was nicknamed the “pill train” because you could get birth control there—contraception is now widely available, having been legalized in 1993.

  The issue of contraception was so touchy that when Mary Robinson, then in Irish parliament, first presented the idea in the 1970s, not one parliamentarian supported her move to legalize it.3

  Divorce is now legal in some circumstances; women—who until two decades ago were forbidden to sit on juries—are now powerful forces in organized voting groups. The Catholic Church, while still respected, is now taking a backseat.

  Sign of the times: The late-1990s Channel 4 Irish comedy Father Ted, about a household of inept priests who are always competing with other clergymen, was a social marker. It wasn’t long ago that knocking the sacred cow of religion was unthinkable.

  Granted, there’s a bit of a moral vacuum at the moment, with Ireland finding herself more moneyed and with few social constraints outside the new no-smoking laws. Binge drinking is up; so are heroin use and drug use in general. Marriage is postponed, the birth rate is dropping, and divorce is on the rise. Well, good-bye banshees and little people; Ireland has finally entered the modern world.

  History Review

  Ireland’s history isn’t so obvious these days. It’s cloaked in the misty hills that fall to the coast like crumpled green velvet, hidden in the gray stone cottages and old country inns with creaking clocks and blazing fires, buried in the graveyards with looped Celtic crosses blackened by time, and it’s hard to make out in the caves where walls are scrawled with mysterious ancient languages that nobody can read. Passing buildings splashed with bright murals that look cheery until you notice their angry slogans, you can still sense it—and if you’re looking at the caged and barbed-wire reinforced police stations in Northern Ireland, built to withstand rocket-launched grenades, you feel it quite strongly. But wherever you are, the political-religious tension that has so long defined Ireland—never mind all the agreements and the cease-fires and even the healing effects of increased wealth—is still there staring at you, even in the quaintest of glowing gaslit pubs.

  VOCABULARY BUILDER

  Gaelic, the original Celtic tongue, is also the language of Irish nationalism, and its words and phrases still pepper Irish speech today. Suppressed by the English and a symbol of poverty and disobedience, Gaelic went hand-in-hand with louder calls for independence.

  Éire: Ireland

  Taoiseach: Prime Minister

  Craic: laughs with friends

  Seanachai: storyteller whose fireside tales brighten rainy nights

  Giodam: sprightly stroll

  Mìshaolta: otherworldly

  Pòtaire: drunkard

  If only the Romans had showed up in Ireland, her entire history might have been different. The Roman conquerors made it to England, where they built walls and roads, and linked trade to the Continent; but the third-century adventurers never made it across the Irish Sea, leaving Ireland’s environment wild, undeveloped, and unconnected. The Vikings tramped through, however, starting in the eighth century AD, being keen fans of Ireland’s churches. They weren’t fond of the Catholic religion, but Vikings loved the gold that dripped from church walls, which they looted along with other church treasures.

  The Vikings did, however, put Ireland on the commercial map. Dublin was originally a Viking trade post.

  The English were also drawn to Ireland in part because of the Church. Protestant from the sixteenth century on, the English and Scots dismissed the Catholic Irish as superstitious savages, and apparently not having heard the commandment “Thou shall not steal—especially from a church,” Henry VIII sent his men to plunder the holy houses as well. Henry’s new Anglican religion eventually set up house on the western isle, where it was called the Church of Ireland—which became a huge issue, because the Irish were required to tithe to the Protestant Church even though they were Catholic.

  Book of Kells: Considering how many times the Catholic Church in Ireland was ravaged, it’s almost a miracle that this ornate copy of the Gospels from the
eighth century still exists. With shimmering gold woven into its pages, the flowery Latin script flows between fantastical images of serpents and beasts. The Book of Kells is housed in Dublin’s Trinity College.

  In the early seventeenth century, the English sent thousands of Protestants to colonize the northern part of the island—and their arrival and treatment of the Irish as wild cannibals didn’t play well, leading to a fiery Irish uprising in 1641, which the English easily stamped out. When the English civil war kicked off at about the same time, the Catholic Irish, continuing on a losing streak, cast their lot for the king. The war’s victor, parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell (who celebrated victory by executing the king), exacted cruel revenge on the undeveloped Catholic backwater which he loathed. To solve the “Irish Problem,” Cromwell yanked away almost all Irish rights and passed laws stripping Ireland of her culture, from language and music to jigs and traditional clothes. Catholic Irish couldn’t buy houses or land, attend schools, or enter professions such as law.

  Britain’s treatment of Ireland was lampooned in the eighteenth-century novel Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, who satirically writes of two islands, one happy and perfect, and the second residing under the first and receiving all the upper one’s slop. His best-known stab at the Englishman’s skewed view of the Irish, however, was his essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he sarcastically suggests that the Irish eat their young, thereby staving off hunger and keeping the population under control.